


shorn

by calciseptine



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash, the 90s were a rough decade, yearbook pictures are the devil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-17
Updated: 2012-10-17
Packaged: 2017-11-16 13:07:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/539754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calciseptine/pseuds/calciseptine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles needs a haircut.</p>
            </blockquote>





	shorn

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by [this picture](http://kaciart.tumblr.com/post/33751173586), drawn by the lovely [kaciart](http://kaciart.tumblr.com/)! Special thanks to [Heather](http://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari) for giving this a quick once over. ♥

From kindergarten to the sixth grade, all of Stiles’ school pictures look the same: a gray background, a wide and overeager smile, and the same awful haircut.

There are some variations, of course. Stiles is missing two teeth in his first grade picture; in his fourth grade picture, he stuffed his favorite Pokémon t-shirt in his bag and changed out of his stiff sweater vest in the bathroom before the school secretary called for S thru U; and in his sixth grade picture, he popped the collar of the polo he was wearing and opened the top button to show off his puka shell necklace. Scott laughs himself sick whenever he cracks open Stiles’ old yearbooks.

“Dude,” he gasps between his uncontrollable hiccups of laughter. “Dude, look at your hair!”

“Come on,” Stiles argues, his pitch rising into a whine. He tries—and fails—to snatch the book (fifth grade: his first year with glasses, before he demanded contacts) out of Scott’s hands. “Everyone knows that the fashion of the late nineties and early 2ks was a boy-band fueled nightmare.”

“I remember what was cool.” Scott glances back down at the picture. Another snort of laughter bubbles out of his throat. “And this was _not_ cool.”

Stiles manages to wrest the evidence out of Scott’s hands as his so-called best friend loses it again. Truth be told, there is no explanation for his hair; he had worn his hair the same way for most of his childhood and never thought to change it. Sure, there were other boys who wore their hair long—Greenburg had grown his pin-straight blond hair to his shoulders in elementary school—so Stiles’ chin length bob was hardly out of place. What was out of place was the massive amount of curls.

“Why did you cut it?” Scott asks when he calms down, cracking open a can of Code Red.

Stiles deadpans.

“You know what I mean,” Scott says. “Sure you had a serious case of temple head, but girls love curly hair. And—ahh—boys too. I heard Allison and Danny talk about it once.”

Stiles remembers the way his mom used to card her fingers through his hair when they sat together on the couch to watch cartoons. “You have such beautiful curls,” she would murmur as she wound her finger around the loose coil. “I am so jealous.”

“I like it better like this,” Stiles answers. If Scott hears the way Stiles’ heart beats just a little bit faster with the half-lie, he says nothing about.

.

Between pack time, the supernatural shenanigans that occur in Beacon Hills on a bi-monthly basis, and his AP classes, Stiles forgets certain things, like getting the oil for the Jeep changed and going down to the barber’s to get his hair cut.

“Are you growing out your hair?” Allison asks when she sits down with them for lunch. She and Scott haven’t picked up the dating baton again, but she’s around more often than she was when they were.

“Huh?”

Allison shrugs. “I think this is the longest I’ve ever seen it.” She pauses and squints at him. “Wait, do you have curly hair? I swear your ends are curling.”

Stiles runs a hand across his head self-consciously and, instead of the normal prickle, he feels the softness of longer hair slide across his palm. He doesn’t know how he hasn’t noticed; he looks at himself in the mirror everyday to check his thickening facial hair and scan his T-zone for unwanted blackheads. An sour knot hardens in his stomach.

“I think you would look really good,” Allison continues, oblivious to Stiles’ small crisis. “I know it doesn’t make much of a difference, but a new haircut can make you feel like a whole new person. A change of pace could be a good thing.”

“I’ll think about it,” Stiles lies, but his voice breaks halfway through. He is saved from Allison’s sudden scrutiny, however, when Scott plops down next to her, as Erica grabs the seat on Stiles’ right and Danny the seat on Stiles’ left. Stiles immediately pulls Danny into a conversation about their last AP US History DBQ and ignores the small glances Allison throws his way for the rest of lunch.

.

When school ends, all Stiles wants to do is run across town to the barber shop and have Clark, the old man who has been cutting Stiles’ and the sheriff’s hair for years, shave the excess inch of hair off. He bolts out of his final period, makes a pit stop by his locker to shove the necessary textbooks into his backpack, and sprints to the parking lot, only to be stopped by the sight of Derek’s Camaro idling by the curb.

_Crap,_ Stiles thinks.

Stiles opens the passenger door and sticks his head in. Derek raises an eyebrow at him.

“Hey,” Stiles wheezes, out of breath from his mad scramble. “I know I said I’d help you with the territory research stuff this afternoon, but can I rain check?”

“What for?” Derek asks.

“I need a haircut,” Stiles says.

Stiles only realizes how strange that sounds as it leaves his mouth and he feels an embarrassed flush rise in his cheeks and throat. Derek looks at him, his eyes obscured by the black lenses of his aviators, before he snorts and turns his attention back to the students walking past the front of the Camaro.

“Get in,” he commands.

“But I really need one!” Stiles protests. “I’ll come over right after, I promise. It will take an hour, tops.”

“No.” Derek puts his hand on the gear shift and throws a ‘don’t bullshit me, I’m your alpha’ glare in Stiles’ direction. “ _Now,_ Stiles.”

Stiles grumbles incoherently as he complies, sliding into the bucket seat and putting his backpack on the floor between his knees. He crosses his arms and sulks the twenty minutes it takes to get to Derek’s apartment. Derek glares at him again when he slams the side door.

“What?” Stiles says testily, but the only reply he gets is Derek’s stony silence. It would be more irritating if Stiles hadn’t accepted Derek’s quiet demeanor months ago; for all that Stiles talks too much and Derek talks too little, their reasons for doing so are markedly similar.

Stiles makes himself at home when they get inside, toeing out of his sneakers and dropping his backpack by the front door. He digs in the fridge for something to drink, but all that greets him are various protein drinks, some V8, and a couple bottles of what looks like bright green baby vomit. Stiles sighs and gets himself a glass of tap water instead.

“Okay,” he mutters when he sits down on the couch. His sock-covered toes brush against Derek’s jean-covered thigh. “Hit me.”

They spend the next hour flipping through various texts, searching for an answer to their territory dispute conundrum. There’s a pack of eight strong that just moved into the town northwest of Beacon Hills, and there’s an area in the woods that their alpha is contesting Derek for rights. Derek doesn’t want to hand it over; apparently, the Hale territory is tens upon thousands of acres, and it has been controlled by the Hale pack since the first Hale settled in California, eons ago in the late 1920s. Stiles understands why Derek is loathe to give it up—he clings to everything that once belonged to his lost family—but territory disputes traditionally end in bloodshed. Stiles honestly doesn’t know who would win, and he really, really doesn’t want to find out.

Stiles is immersed in a text when Derek says, “You weren’t lying.”

“Huh?” Stiles says for the second time that day.

“You weren’t lying,” Derek reiterates. When Stiles remains as confused as ever, Derek clarifies, “About your hair.”

Stiles reaches up and drags his fingers through the too-long strands atop his head. “What about my hair?”

The muscle in Derek’s jaw twitches. Derek’s quick and obvious anger used to terrify Stiles, but he’s come to learn that while Derek’s ire rises as swiftly as a deluge, it passes just as rapidly. True to form, Derek inhales deeply, exhales, and says, “You’ve been constantly touching your hair.”

Ripping his hand away from his head, Stiles blurts, “No I haven’t!”

Derek ignores him. “It really bothers you.”

It isn’t a question and Derek’s eyes wander along the jagged line of Stiles’ unruly hair, the strands wild from his nervous fingers. Stiles stares very hard at the patch of skin exposed by Derek’s v-neck.

“I have a pair of clippers,” Derek says after a long pause.

Stiles laughs at this, if not weakly. “Thanks for the offer dude, but the last time I cut my own hair, there was a lot of swearing and band-aids involved. I leave it to the professionals now.”

“I could do it.”

Stiles looks up from the dip between Derek’s collarbones and takes in the serious line of Derek’s mouth. It took Stiles longer than it should have to realize that Derek was a good guy; despite his monosyllabic approach to conversation, his naturally grumpy face, and his fatalistic outlook on life, all Derek wanted was to do the right thing. Truthfully, Stiles still has a hard time wrapping his mind around the concept, even when he’s directly confronted with Derek’s kindness.

“Yeah,” Stiles eventually croaks. “Yeah, that’d work.”

Derek gets up to grab the clippers and a towel, while Stiles goes into the kitchen and drags one of the chairs from the table. He fidgets with the book in his hands—he needs something to focus on that isn’t Derek—flips to the page he was previously on, and tries not to jump when Derek wraps the towel around his shoulders.

“Hold still,” Derek says as he turns on the clippers.

Derek starts in the back. He uses one hand to gently push Stiles’ head forward while the other guides the clippers with ease against the curvature of Stiles’ skull. Instead of feeling anxious like he expected, Stiles feels the tension that has been building all day fall away with each strand. The buzz of the clippers and Derek’s slow but practiced motions are soothing, and the words on the page in front of him blur.

“I used to have long hair,” Stiles begins, the words falling from him with surprising ease. Derek stops for a fraction of a second, his hesitation almost imperceptible. “It was super curly and my mom loved to mess with it. I had the same hair cut until she got sick—and then when her hair fell out—she acted like she didn’t care, but I knew she did.

“So one day, after my dad and I got back from the hospital, I took a pair of scissors and cut off all my hair. The bathroom was a mess and my dad had to shave it because it was so patchy but—it felt right, you know? My mom lost her hair, and I lost mine. And now I—I have to keep it short. For her.”

Derek doesn’t falter as he swipes the clippers around the curve of Stiles’ ear, but his big hand slides down to Stiles’ shoulder. Stiles can feel the solid heat of his palm through the heavy cotton of the towel. It says, _I understand,_ as loud and as clear as if Derek had voiced the sentiment aloud. Stiles relaxes into the back of the chair and, just beyond that, Derek’s steady presence.

“So,” Stiles asks as Derek finishes, cleaning the back of Stiles’ neck. His rough fingertips brush the stubborn hairs from Stiles’ skin, a soft reassurance. “Can I shave your beard after?”

“No,” Derek says.

.

The next day at lunch, Allison sits down next to Stiles.

“Scott showed me your old yearbook pictures,” she says with a smile. Stiles groans, but she presses her shoulder to his and laughs good-naturedly. “Mine were pretty bad too. I had braces up until the ninth grade, and there was this one time I thought wearing a kitten sweater would be a good idea.”

Stiles smiles broadly and says, “The nineties were a rough decade, bro.”

“Tell me about it.” She bites her lip and her gaze darts to Stiles’ shorn head. He can see a thousand questions flicker behind her eyes, but what she finally asks is, “So, you’re sticking with it?”

“Yeah,” Stiles says. “I think I am.”


End file.
